On The Artistic Style Of Ni Zan’s Painting

Painting of man-of-letters in the Yuan Dynasty plays a decisive role in Chinese painting history. Most of the paintings at that time are landscape painting. Ni Zan is an outstanding representative landscape painter of the Yuan Dynasty, who conducted a subversive revolution of Chinese ink painting in previous dynasty. Ni Zan’s breakthrough in the expression style of landscape painting is a process of surpassing reality and pursuing personality freedom, thus forming a simple but lofty painting style. He changed complexity into simplicity, and chose scenery that could be most identical to his mood; he also simplified and generalized the image, but meanwhile, used the simple but light-hearted landscape to express his complex and rich emotions and ideas. Ni Zan’s landscape paintings with his unique individual artistic style produced huge influence on the landscape painting in the Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty and even the whole Chinese history of landscape painting. Even today, Ni Zan’s artistic painting style still has important significance andenlightenment on modern landscape painting creation.This thesis takes the evolvement and features of Ni Zan’s artistic painting style as the major research context. Starting from his life story, the thesis then analyzes the major features of his landscape painting style at the initial stage, climax stage and later years. After that, it further explores the artistic segmentation of Ni Zan’s landscape from aspects of artistic features, painting forms as well as the radiance of poetry, calligraphy and painting. At the same time, it analyzes the causes of his artistic painting style from perspectives of historical background, personal habit and inheritance traditions. Finally, it is hoped that the thesis may be of some help to guide the creation practice of modern landscape painting through the comprehensive understanding of Ni Zan’s artistic state and his artistic creation charm.The thesis consists of three parts—introduction, main body and conclusion. The introduction part mainly introduces the research background and significance of the thesis. By clearing up relative domestic literature, it explores the current research situation of Ni Zan’s artistic painting style from a macro perspective. Based on the comprehensive analysis of the existing literature, Iwill also expound my new viewpoints as well as the potential breakthrough and innovation of the research.The main body is divided into three parts. The first part is about Ni Zan’s life story and his painting style evolvement. This part firstly introduces Ni Zan’s basic information and his life experience, and then starting from Ni Zan’s life story, his art course is divided into early period, peak period and later period. And according to his paintings and theoretical ideas, the author further illustrates the forming progress of Ni Zan’s landscape artistic style.The second part is about Ni Zan’s landscape painting style as well as cause analysis. Starting from artistic features, painting techniques and interaction of the three, this part analyzes Ni Zan’s landscape painting artistic style. It is believed that in artistic features, Ni Zan’s landscape painting is concise and simple, which usually consists of close shot, medium shot and long shot; in painting techniques, Ni Zan’s landscape can be quite vivid, painting freely but also not randomly; in the interaction of the three, Ni Zan’s landscape painting realizes radiance of poetry, calligraphy and painting. This part also explores the cause of Ni Zan’s painting style, believing the formation of his artistic painting style is closely related to the historical background, personal habits and inheritance traditions.The third part is about the enlightenment of Ni Zan’s painting artistic style on modern landscape creation. It is believed that Ni Zan’s painting artistic style is still of great significance at the present time, which can provide beneficial enlightenment for modern landscape creation. Specifically, it takes nature as teacher, realm as soul, painting as core and age as pulse.The last part is conclusion, which summarizes the whole thesis. This part has a comprehensive understanding of Ni Zan’s painting artistic style, and through the research on Ni Zan’s paintings in different periods as well as the inspiration on his painting artistic style, it is hoped that we can be enlightened and draw inspiration, which thus will be applied to modern landscape painting creation.